I've been shooting youth sports for the past couple of years and am starting to accumulate quite a few images that I don't think will ever generate any future orders so I was wondering how long you other sports photographers keep these types of files on your hard drives?

I don't delete anything, not any more. External hard drives are where they all get stored, but I learned my lesson on deleting files. The hard way.

artflake wrote:
but I learned my lesson on deleting files. The hard way.

Tell a story, tell a story!!! Im just curious how bad it could have been.


I agree with you tho, 1TB ext HD is what now, $100?


Also to the OP, assuming your desktop doesnt already have eSata capability, if you have an open sata port Id suggest getting an ext HD with eSata port.....with an eSata cable you'll be able to make very large downloads in literally minutes, making life a little easier.

I don't "get rid of" anything. Storage is dirt cheap these days. You never know when there might be a need for those images. In the past month I've been contacted by a mom wanted to reorder images from a little league T&I from 2000 and also local high school needed 16x20's of 2 different past years football teams (2002 & 2004 as the old ones got damaged)

Would the world end if I couldn't fulfill those orders.....no, but its sure nice to be able to

XFBO wrote:
artflake wrote:
but I learned my lesson on deleting files. The hard way.

Tell a story, tell a story!!! Im just curious how bad it could have been.


I have had two bad experiences, one was after i shot the Grand Am races at Barber Motorsports Park, on my own, not as a hired camera, and I went through and culled out the images of the cars I did not like, or did not care about...then one of the teams saw a picture I took that had their car in the background, and asked if i had any of their car highlighted that they could buy...I had tossed all of them.

And about a year ago, in my first use of shooting in RAW, I did my whole shoot in RAW, then converted to jpeg, because I did not have the right tools for working in RAW at the time, so I tossed all of the RAW files. just this week I needed one of those RAW files for a graphic design friend of mine, paying client for one image...I had it, have it in jpeg, but that is not good enough, not big enough...

yep, I have learned my lessons. I keep everything now, unless it is truly trash, I cull out anything that is OOF, or shots that i just plain missed.

TSparger wrote:
I've been shooting youth sports for the past couple of years and am starting to accumulate quite a few images that I don't think will ever generate any future orders so I was wondering how long you other sports photographers keep these types of files on your hard drives?

Forever. I still have digital copies of the first frames I ever took. In fact, I have 2 copies of every frame I have ever taken.

Lots and lots of hard drives keep everything safe.

I'll put a new spin on this...

Of course for personal stuff - forever.

For business stuff: 18 months.
But it would depend on what one does. Me, I shoot youth sports. I shoot over 1 million pix per season. Up to 250,000 in a single weekend. I can fill a TB drive every month easy. My main file servers has 12TB nearly full from the last 18 months, my web server has over 2 million photos online (but customers can find their images in as little as two clicks)

I tell my customers that I keep image for 12 months. And in that year, it works out pretty well: outside of right after an event, I get a spike of web orders at the end of the season, Christmas and right before the same show the next year.
I actually leave images online for 15 months to pick up any stragglers, and then take them off the web - keeping the master images for 18 months before actually DELETING them - giving 3 more months for people to "all of a sudden NEED the images".

But after 18 months, we've moved on - so have customers. I need more space for current (selling) images and customers don't look back for a 2 year old photo of their child.

I do keep all previously sold images - for reprint/loss replacement. This takes up only a tiny fraction of space for a season.


In the past 8 years, I've had one customer ask for replacement images of something they've previously ordered, and only 3 customers asking for something from more than 18 months back. From the current posts - only photolew has had a couple of REorders that this fulfills.

So I've lost potentially 3 orders. Lets say I do what most companies do and charge a $25 'recovery' fee, and then print costs on top of that: $10 for a 4x6 or something. Is $35 worth storing 5-6 million photos on several hard drives - to look up, find, and print one order every other year?
Yes, drives are cheap now - but they haven't always been. Not to mention, images are getting larger. So if I have to manage say a 1TB drive every month (two if I was smart to have a real backup), then I'd be looking at todays cost of $80 per drive (MUCH higher in the recent past). Needing about 8TB per season, that would be $640 per season (double that with a backup) - so potentially $2500 in storage to recover 1 file every other year to make $35.

That just doesn't make sense to me - no matter how proud I am of the images.

To me, its a matter of business. Fact 1: older images will sell considerably less over time. Fact 2: If they're not on the web for people to see, then people don't know you have them for sale.
So I kill them after 18 months. This saves me drive space, backup worries, filing issues - and when somebody calls for a 3 year old photo, I can confidently say that its gone - instead of spending days looking for the right hard drive that it's stored on.

Which raises a question for the rest of you event sports shooters (as a business) that keep your images: If they are not online and you don't advertise that you have them - WHY do you keep them?

Everybody has their reasons, nostalgia, pride, possible revenue, packrat... I'm just curious if its really worth it for something that will never be seen again.

If your a casual shooter or hobbiest, I can understand the wanting to keep images - although I think alot of us could really ask ourselves why?

a million per season...wow, I will probably never shoot a million in my life. I can see why you don't keep yours for long.

I fall into the category of your last line, casual, and once in a while get to sell them. So, I keep them. I have gone back more than 18 months for one client, went back 2 years, he bought every image of him and his car I had, and was glad to pay for my service of going back through the archives. But in 3 years, I only have about 1TB of images, all well organized. I just can't imagine a TB a month...boggles my mind.

Hammy wrote:

Everybody has their reasons, nostalgia, pride, possible revenue, packrat... I'm just curious if its really worth it for something that will never be seen again.

All of the above? =) I only have in the neighborhood of 1,000,000 photos so really my storage needs are nothing compared to yours. That's obvious. I guess I just see no reason to delete them when I have essentially endless amounts of storage space at this time.

Are most of them never going to be seen again? Sure. But you just never know when someone might need a photo ..... or when I might want to look back at older work .....

I've got about 400k photos in triplicate (Main, backup on a Drobo, and all of them on Photoshelter)

I actually find, and maybe this is crazy, but it actually takes less time for me to upload and store it all, than to find images to delete. Oh sure, finding good,great,etc images is one thing, but it certainly doesnt mean all the other photos go away, as they could serve as basic stock. So rather than do two searches, I just upload it all. I have the bandwidth to do it over a few hours, especially since I do it overnight.

And I've only reached about 75% of my space on Photshelter. My Drobo is expandable.

By the time I've maxed out my PS account I can afford another TB. Same for my Drobo. I've got 2 500 and 2 1TB drives on there. My main work is split amongst two drives (1TB all NBA, 1TB non NBA).

I plan on working out a deal with a friend of mine where we each get a second drobo and host a local backup of our work at each others home, using a backup service, so that I could get local copies via PS or if I lose a lot, just a local sneakernet over.

The key is easy expandability. My Drobo is expandable. In fact it started as 4 500gb drives. 2 1TB drives cost a few hundred bucks and added a bunch of space, which it took about a year to go through.

I may opt for a DroboPro, just not sure I want an 8 drive bay yet. But if it's expandable and allows me to use less than 1 external drive, that's a big plus.

.

Time is money. No doubt. Time to delete takes, well, time. So, you gotta balance that cost against the cost to buy a new hard drive which is pretty negligible.

Here is a good article on this concept: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-07/mf_freer

I keep everything, redundantly, on site, off site and on the net. While it might not make financial sense to keep everything, you never know and I spend a lot less time trying to cull and less time means less cost.

Hammy wrote:
Up to 250,000 in a single weekend.

All I can say is... wow.
that's 12,500 an hour if you have two 10 hour shooting days, or 208 frames per min... an average of 3.5 fps all weekend long. (I'm guessing the hours are low and you have more shooting than just you). That's a lot of frames no matter how you slice it, and canon has 2 spare shutters with your name on it right now, don't they?

I don't think I'd be able to go through that many pictures in a week just to sort them into keep/don't keep piles. Kudos to you for being able to manage that amount of information.

Tim, thanks for the link. And yes, time is money. That's why I often look to manage things with time as the most precious resource. As far as keeping all my images, the truth is that my account is going to cost the same regardless of how many photos are stored there (as long as I don't meet my 2TB limit. I'm at 75% right now). And my Drobo will run 24/7 regardless of the photos on there.

By the time I go over my limits, the media (hard drives, accounts) will have lowered in price. Thats why I got 4 500gb drives to start. they were $100 each, while 1TB drives were 300 at the time. This year, my upgrade to 2 1TB drives cost me 200 dollars, replacing 2 500GB drives that cost me 100 dollars. That total cost for those 2 slots was 400 dollars for 2 1TB drives. Last year, those same drives would have cost me 600 dollars. By the time I upgrade my other 2 500GB drives, that will cost me 150 dollars currently, or less later on. So I actually saved money by getting more drives.

And those 500GB drives won't go to waste. They will go in a second DROBO at some point. Or become part of a DroboPro pack.


Trojan, remember though that Hammy is shooting large tourneys and managing photos for several shooters. His business model as well as his storage/archive model will probably differ from many of us. At the tournament I shot for him last year, I went through 25,000 frames in a matter of 3 days, and we had nearly a dozen shooters there. The point is that the scope of what Hammy has to do is far different than my own personal strategy.

Which means there is no one right strategy. you must find the right balance between time, scope, and budget. Do that, and you'll find your answers.

Max

Well to expound on some of what was said.

Hammy has a large team of photographers and that is why he has so many images.

I have a business like his but on a MUCH smaller scale where I need to use other photograhers. My rule is to keep EVERYTHING for about 12-18 months. After that I delete all the images that my other photographers took.

I keep EVERYTHING that I take forever.

I see no reason to keep everything that you shoot with storage being so cheap as was already mentioned. But if you have hired help...keep for as long as you see fit then can it. You can't use it for YOUR portfolio so delete after the shelflife has expired

Like most people here, I keep everything but then I'm usually on my own or maybe have one or two shooters with me. At a maximum I'll generate around 250 gigs a week on my own but that is down to me using my 1DsMkIII for just about everything and the files are huge.